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Verun the Defender
((For newer members, all the information on this page is free to be known IC by members of the Hall - although considering Osric and Liissa's actions you need to be clear about '''how' you know some things. If you want to find out more in RP that is also fine.))'' History Verun was a native of Skarsind, a member of the Kalavessi tradition, he grew up on the northernmost border in a small hall called Torsten’s Reach. Their symbol was a stylised blue stallion. He was soon found to have a natural aptitude for magic, with a particular predilection towards the Summer realm. It was in the year 373, a year into his training as a summer mage that the Thule invaded. Torsten’s Reach, being on the border was among the first to fall. Captured and taken by the Thule as a slave he was transported to Otkodov before the Thule had even truly begun in earnest. The Thule’s lust for magical power is probably what saved Verun from the usual form of slavery. Given his natural ability, but clearly minimal training, he was claimed by a Thule cabal, The Screams of Sydanjaa. It was here, piece by piece he truly learned the bulk of his craft, acting at the best of times as an assistant, and at the worst of times as little more than a battery. Their magical paradigm, the snares of the soul, wherein magic is a tool to bind the souls of the servants along the paths decided upon by their masters, found a perverse symmetry to his native hearth magic of the skein. Joining the Hall In the year 377 his ‘coven’ were on the frontlines of the Wintermark counteroffensive. It was during a battle in which Verun was being used as more of a battery than an active ritualist that the Screams of Sydanjaa were wiped out by Wintermark forces. This is what mostly saved his life, as he was found in the centre of the ritual circle bearing the marks of a slave and covered in lashes. The pool of blood he was in was not technically his own… but who was he to argue the finer points there and then? ‘Set free’ Verun staggered towards resistance camps, where he was taken in by Sigehold Hall, and continued to fight with them to liberate his old home. Time in Anvil While Verun spent much time with The Kesanling (a summer coven based largely in Sigehold) his first hope was to take the path of the Grimnir. Believing his own skein irreparably damaged by the snares of the soul he hoped that he could at least embolden others with his healing magics. He had to abandon this path however with the decimation of the Kesanling in 379 and devoted himself to trying to rebuild the coven with the other survivors. When not at either the anvil hospital or regio, his spare time went towards helping the Keeper of the Wintermark covens in organising the nation, such as the Hallowing of the Green World. He was also a keen follower of Jotun diplomacy, admiring them as the exact opposite of his Thule masters, and the favoured of the Summer realm. To this end he spent much of his final time with Liissa, aiding her in her diplomatic endeavours, and teaching her the basics of magic. She found after several tutors that his own skein heavy paradigm worked for her. He only hoped that his teachings had not been tainted by the snares of the soul. Verun also followed his hall into battle, supporting the healer lines with offensive and defensive magic, felling Jotun champions aiming for the vulnerable underbelly of the Wintermark line. It was on a battle, where he had been assigned by his Thane, Iron Osric to ensure the safety of Elsa the Fury in a daring skirmish of Grendel backlines that he was received the scop name ‘Verun the Defender’ (as well as several cleaved limbs, arrows through the chest and intense magical induced nausea) Death In the year 381 Verun and Elsa took part in a skirmish against Jotun forces in Kallavesa. The tide quickly turned and the Wintermark forces were annihilated. Grievously wounded and hanging on by a thread Verun returned through the sentinel gate, crawling through blood and marsh as the Jotun watched on, their victory already won. That summer Verun acted as a captain of the Greenshields army, under his Thane and General, Osric. It was in holding Spiral against the Grendel that Verun fell, a victim of both his own old wounds and the brutal waves of Grendel throwing themselves with ferocity against the Wintermark bulwark. His journals, along with his symbol of Torsten’s Reach, now overlaid with a Thule dragon, were destroyed when discovered by Giste, Liissa and Osric, in an attempt to preserve what honour Verun had managed to regain. His remains were interred in the Kallavesi swamps. In the summer of 382, at the hallowing of the swamps, Verun appeared as one of the honoured dead, emerging to carry fallen heroes to their resting place.